Insurers pay N100m as fraud claims to 5 banks

The insurance sector paid over N100 million as fraud claims to five banks in 2015.

Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA) disclosed this in a report obtained by Financial Vanguard. The banks include Ecobank Plc, which received over N15 million claims from Custodian & Allied Insurance; Wema Bank Plc, received over N29.97 million from Great Nigeria Insurance; Fidelity Bank Plc, received N17.05 million from Standard Alliance Insurance; Union Bank Plc, received N6.33 million from AIICO Insurance, the bank also received N19.05 million from Anchor Insurance and Diamond Bank Plc, received N20.22 million from Saham Unitrust Insurance Limited.

Meanwhile, the NIA disclosed that it received N160.47 million as proceeds from data upload on the Nigerian Insurance Industry Database (NIID) in 2016.

According to the Association’s 2016 financial report, the balance in the account of the NIID as at the beginning of the year was N62.12 million, N225,000 was received and N1.23 million stood as interest accrued on the account. Accordingly, its balance as at December 31, 2016 was N69.27 million.

The Association noted that over 8 million motor insurance certificates have been captured on NIID within the period of six years even as the platform has ran consistently hitch-free in the last 12 months.

“The motor module has effectively changed the face of insurance business in Nigeria as incidences of fake motor insurance certificates have drastically reduced. The system features are constantly being enhanced to meet user’s requirements and expectations. In the period under review, additional features to the system include: upload of short term policies; SMS alert of claims upload; mobile app of ask NIID and enhanced reporting facility,” the association stated.

NIA Chairman, Mr. Eddie Efekoha said that in the association’s desire to extend the coverage of the NIID to other states of the federation, it encountered the challenge of network coverage and internet connectivity, adding that the association is taking steps to resolve the issue through the deployment of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code.

He noted that the marine module has been running and member companies are daily uploading on the platform, adding that at the end of May 2017, 33 member-companies have uploaded 65,000 marine policies.

He urged members to continue to upload their marine policies, stressing that plans are being made to bring other stakeholders into the scheme.